I don’t usually write about myself. The Observer has always been about patterns rather than personalities, about stepping back rather than stepping in. I’ve always tried to keep my own story in the background because, at the end of the day, this blog was never supposed to be about me. But I think, just this once, it has to be.
Because over the past few weeks I’ve realised that I’ve spent a great deal of time writing about the person Sam Heughan appears to be today, while hardly ever talking about the reason I admired him in the first place. And perhaps that’s the more interesting story because it’s about what he once inspired in me.
When people ask why I cared so much, the honest answer has very little to do with Outlander. Jamie Fraser may have introduced me to Sam, but he wasn’t the reason I stayed. What stayed with me was the person I believed I was watching. Someone who seemed naturally quiet, reserved, and a little awkward at times. Someone who never struck me as the loudest person in the room, and certainly not someone who enjoyed being the centre of attention. As someone who’s always been rather introverted myself, I recognised something familiar in that. Maybe that’s why it resonated so strongly. What impressed me wasn’t that he appeared fearless. It was that he seemed willing to be afraid and do things anyway.
One of the biggest examples was MPC. Looking back now, I don’t think I appreciated it simply because it was about fitness. It wasn’t. It was about challenging yourself, trying something new, leaving your comfort zone. Finding out that you’re capable of more than you thought you were. That message genuinely changed something in me. I started doing things I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. I tried sports I’d never considered before. I pushed myself further than I normally would have. More importantly, I began doing things on my own instead of always waiting until I felt safe enough or until someone else came along. That wasn’t because someone told me to. It was because I watched another introvert repeatedly step outside what appeared to be his own comfort zone. For that, I’ll probably always be grateful.
There was something else, too. I was lucky enough to see him in person a few times over the years, and what always struck me wasn’t fame or celebrity. It was his ability to make people around him feel enthusiastic about whatever was happening. Whether it was a fitness event or simply encouraging someone to keep going, he had a way of lifting the energy in a room without it ever feeling forced. It felt genuine. That, more than anything else, is what stayed with me.
The same goes for his work. There are performances and interviews that I still think about today because they felt thoughtful, honest and quietly intelligent. Not polished for the sake of being polished, but simply authentic. They revealed someone who seemed reflective, curious and surprisingly grounded. Those moments are still some of my favourite memories of following his career.
There is one particular moment I’ve never really written about, although perhaps one day I will. It happened during an autograph session at a con many, many years ago. While I was waiting in line, another fan stepped forward to meet him first. The moment lasted no more than a few minutes, but his reaction caught my attention immediately. He barely seemed aware of anything else around him. For almost a minute, they simply looked at each other. Neither of them said anything, and he didn’t even appear to continue signing. It was as though, for that brief moment, everything else had faded into the background. It wasn’t the interaction itself that stayed with me. It was what it revealed. I remember thinking that I’d probably learned more about him in that single minute than I ever could from a hundred carefully managed interviews. That’s probably one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to authenticity. Once you’ve seen someone completely unguarded, however briefly, you never quite forget it. Everything that comes afterwards is, consciously or not, measured against that memory.
Perhaps that’s why the last few years have been so difficult to process. Of course, people, careers and priorities change. What was difficult wasn’t watching someone become different. It was quietly hoping that the person who had inspired me for so many years was still somewhere in there. And I think that’s what I’ve finally had to let go of.
I’ll always be grateful for the person who inspired me to step outside my comfort zone, to challenge myself and to believe I was capable of more than I thought. Those memories are real, and nothing that happened later can take them away. But I’ve also come to realise that I’ve spent the last few years quietly waiting to recognise Sam again. And perhaps the hardest part of letting go is accepting that I no longer do. Maybe that’s what this blog has really been documenting all along. Not the story of someone else’s change. But the story of my own goodbye.
MPC Gala, September 2017, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
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